Professional Documents
Culture Documents
0
Study Guide
COMPLETED: AUGUST, 2015
Table of Contents
OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................................ 3
LOGISTICS ................................................................................................................................ 4
THE EXAM ................................................................................................................................. 5
EXAM FAQ ................................................................................................................................. 5
TOPICS ...................................................................................................................................... 6
CONTAINER, DEPENDENCY INJECTION, AND IOC ..................................................................... 6-7
ASPECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING ........................................................................................... 7
JDBC, TRANSACTIONS AND ORM .......................................................................................... 7-8
SPRING MVC AND THE WEB LAYER........................................................................................... 9
SECURITY ................................................................................................................................ 9
MESSAGING ........................................................................................................................... 10
REST ................................................................................................................................ 10-11
RECOURCES ........................................................................................................................... 11
CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................... 12
12 August 2015
Overview
This guide is designed to help you prepare for the Core Spring 4.0 certification exam. Please
be aware that it should not be used if you have attended a Core-Spring course that was using
Spring 3.x (that certification exam is called Core-Spring 3 and there is a dedicated certification
guide that goes with it).
The certification exam is based on the 4-day Core Spring training and the materials provided
with it are the ideal source to use for preparation. Of course as with any certification the most
valuable part, besides recognition, is the learning process. Hence we encourage you to take
time to experiment and follow your curiosity when questions arise.
A 4-day course contains a lot of material. To help you focus your efforts and to know when
you're ready we've put together this guide. The guide contains a list of topics and a list of
further resources. Topics are organized by subject area, where each topic contains a
description of what you should make sure you know.
The list of topics can be used as a check-list. The training materials can be used as a point of
reference and as a learning ground. The list of resources is where you can go further for
getting answers. Everything in the exam is covered somewhere in the course notes.
One possible way to prepare is to do the following for a given training module:
1. Review the slides, making notes of questions
2. Work through the lab
3. Review the list of topics that matches to the module by subject area
4. Use the lab to experiment with anything you need to spend more time on
5. Use the provided list of resources to look for further answers
6. Reading (at least partially) the reference documentation
7. Memorize the "big pictures", tables, overviews, etc
Of course there are many more ways to organize your efforts. You can pair up with someone
else planning to take the exam or review all presentations for a given subject area before
going through the labs. Or maybe you have access to actual applications you can review to
test your knowledge.
Please keep in mind that you are expected to have good working knowledge of all the topics
listed. Most of the questions will be very general, however you will be asked a few advanced
questions.
12 August 2015
Logistics
The certification can be done in any Pearson Vue test center
(http://pearsonvue.com/vtclocator). To locate a test center you have to select "Information
Technology (IT)" as the category and "SpringSource" as the testing program when you enter
the site reachable with the link provided above. When you have found a test center near by
you have to make an appointment in advance and provide the voucher you have gotten per
eMail. If you did not receive a voucher (may take up to 2 weeks) please eMail to
eduction@pivotal.io.
Arrive at the test center early to reduce your stress. You should at least have one identity card
with you (please read the instructions carefully which you have received from the test center).
You put all your belongings into a locker - you are not allowed to have books, pencils, paper,
mobile phone or any other electronic devices with you. The room in which you are doing the
exam is usually under camera surveillance.
12 August 2015
The Exam
The exam itself is a computer based exam. The software which is used to do the exam first
gives you some general instructions: how to navigate, how to mark a question, etc - please
read it carefully. Once you have agreed that you want to start, you have 90 minutes to answer
50 multiple-choice questions. You must answer 38 questions correctly (76%) in order to pass
the exam. Basic exam technique applies: read each question carefully and answer the
question that was asked not what you thought was asked.
Exam FAQ
1. Is there anything in the exam, which was not covered in the course?
No.
2. Do I have to know class names and method signatures?
No. We think that this is why you are using an IDE - for us it's much more important
that you've understood the concepts rather than learning method signatures.
3. Do I have to write, complete or rearrange source code?
No. The only thing you should be able to do is reading a snippet of code and
understand what it's doing. This might be an example of a class implementing a
listener and you will then see a couple of related questions. We do not ask you
questions on things an IDE can do for you, like checking if the code will compile.
4. Do I have to know any other APIs like AspectJ-Expression-Language in Detail?
No. Of course you should be able to read, understand and use AspectJ-ExpressionLanguage wherever it is necessary to configure Spring but this is not an exam about
AspectJ.
5. How long is the voucher valid?
The voucher is valid one year (please also check the expiry date in the email) and it
allows you to do one attempt. If you don't pass , then you must purchase another
voucher (not the whole course again) for yourself. Also please note - if you fail an
attempt - there is a mandatory 6 weeks lockout period until you can have your next try.
6. Are the advanced slides part of the exam?
No. Only the content presented before each chapter lab slide will be on the exam. Any
course content presented after the chapter lab will not be on the exam. No content
from the optional chapters will be on the exam.
12 August 2015
Topics
The following is a list of topics, each of which is likely to have questions on the exam.
Several of the bullet points below overlap, asking the same (or a related) question in a
different way. The answer to more than one bullet point question may be the same as the
answer to another question just before or after. Don't let this confuse you.
12 August 2015
12 August 2015
12 August 2015
MVC is an abbreviation for a design pattern. What does it stand for and what is the
idea behind it?
Do you need spring-mvc.jar in your classpath or is it part of spring-core?
What is the DispatcherServlet and what is it used for?
Is the DispatcherServlet instantiated via an application context?
What is the root application context? How is it loaded?
What is the @Controller annotation used for? How can you create a controller
without an annotation?
What is the ContextLoaderListener and what does it do?
What are you going to do in the web.xml. Where do you place it?
How is an incoming request mapped to a controller and mapped to a method?
What is the @RequestParam used for?
What are the differences between @RequestParam and @PathVariable?
What are some of the valid return types of a controller method?
What is a View and what's the idea behind supporting different types of View?
How is the right View chosen when it comes to the rendering phase?
What is the Model?
Why do you have access to the model in your View? Where does it come from?
What is the purpose of the session scope?
What is the default scope in the web context?
Why are controllers testable artifacts?
What does the InternalResourceViewResolver do?
SECURITY
12 August 2015
MESSAGING
What is JMS?
What are the advantages of messaging?
What is a JmsTemplate used for? How are you going to create it?
Are you able to work asynchronous in JMS/Spring-Messaging?
What is a broker and why does it decouple your application components?
What is the difference between a queue and a topic? Name some real world
examples?
Are the messages stored in the broker? How long?
What is the JmsTemplate and which callback does it have?
What are the defaults if you do not provide a callback implementation to the
JmsTemplate?
What is a JMS listener? Which method does it force you to implement? When will
the method get called?
What is a message, what is a Destination and what is a MessageProducer?
What is a JMS session? What do you have to do if you would like to work in or
participate in a transaction?
How can you work asynchronously in Spring JMS when you cannot implement the
MessageListener interface? What is a message driven POJO?
If you implement the MessageListener interface - who is calling your onMessage
method? What do you have to configure to make this working?
What do you have to do if you would like to work transactionally?
Why does the template need a connection factory?
REST
12 August 2015
10
Name some common http response codes. When do you need @ResponseStatus?
Does REST work with transport layer security (TLS)?
Do you need Spring MVC in your classpath?
Resources
http://spring.io/blog
Blog: Point your favorite RSS reader or come back for detailed, quality posts by Spring
developers.
http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference
Reference: The reference documentation (800+ pages) is available as html pages, a single
html page and as a PDF document.
http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/javadoc-api
Javadoc API
http://springbyexample.org
Spring By Example: Another good repository with good code samples is SpringByExample.
12 August 2015
11
Conclusion
When you worked through this guide and know all the answers, we are pretty confident that
you should pass the certification. It's recommended to do it as soon as possible and we wish
you good luck with it.
Thank you again for choosing Pivotal as your education partner and good luck with your
projects.
If you have encountered any errors, have any suggestions or enquiries please don't hesitate to
contact your trainer or write an email to eduction@pivotal.io.
12 August 2015
12